Drowning

lonely isn't the word for this

not my job anymore

The End

Reasons to Leave

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Tear It Down

Paper Cup

Whispering Pines

Dust n' Bones

Cultural Identity Adaptation. Examines how personas vary across cultures, revealing identity's fluid yet persistent nature across diverse social environments. From my upcoming book "Breakfast with Jung" - Chapter 4: The Persona.

MASKS of the WORLD

In New York's glass canyons
I wear ambition like a tailored Armani
My voice a razor-edged saxophone
Cutting through Manhattan's vertical dreams
Some nights, loneliness echoes between towers

Tokyo wraps me in layers of keigo
Each bow origami-precise, perfectly timed
In subway silence, I fold myself smaller
Until my Western edges disappear
Still, my laughter sometimes breaks protocol

Lagos embraces me in Ankara rhythms
Air thick with diesel dreams and palm oil
Here, even silence speaks in proverbs
While my tongue learns to dance between
English proper and pidgin truth

In Delhi's ancient-modern maze
I dissolve into family's warm ghee
Where "I" means "we" means centuries
Of aunties measuring love in chapati
Yet sometimes solitude calls like a copper temple bell

Melbourne catches me between hemispheres
Part London formal, part Pacific ease
Here, my persona sports board shorts and thongs
With theoretically infinite irony
While belonging slips through gum-tree shadows

In Māori marae, I learn to wait
My Western rush dissolved in ritual
Pōwhiri protocols reshape my edges
Until I know my place in the spiral
Though my bones still hold foreign rhythms

Each culture's mask fits differently
Some loose as silk, some tight as fate
All me, none me entirely, these faces
I gather at identity's bazaar
Each one teaching me how to be strange

Masks of the World

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Zach Hood